Aneesh Chopra – The Open Innovator’s Toolkit

This talk is cosponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School’s “Technology and Public Policy” thematic lecture series and the Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP).

Aneesh Chopra, the former and first federal chief technology officer, will be at Princeton as the Conor D. Reilly Distinguished Visitor in Leadership and Governance and through the generous support of the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation. The “Leadership and Governance” program at the Woodrow Wilson School brings prominent public policy leaders to the School who are unable to spend a full semester or academic year on campus, but can visit for a shorter period of time. While on campus the “distinguished visitor” delivers a public lecture, meets informally with individuals or small groups of students, and participates in classroom discussions.

When President Obama announced Chopra’s appointment in 2009, he noted that the chief technology officer’s job would be to “promote technological innovation and make the government more effective, efficient, and transparent.” As Chopra stepped down from his position as federal chief technology officer in early 2012, Obama stated that Chopra “found countless ways to engage the American people using technology, from electronic health records for veterans, to expanding access to broadband for rural communities to modernizing government records.”

Prior to his presidential appointment, Chopra served as the secretary of technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia from January 2006 – April 2009. According to The Washington Post, during his four-year tenure, Chopra was credited with “developing a modern website, using social-networking tools that ranged from Facebook to Twitter, to the lesser-known Ning, which creates smaller social networks. Using Ning, Chopra was able to get information to small-town Virginia doctors about combating obesity or immunization updates.”

He also served as managing director with the Advisory Board Company, a publicly-traded healthcare think tank. In 2008, Chopra was named to Government Technology magazine’s Top 25 in their “Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers” issue. He received his B.A. from Johns Hopkins University and his M.P.P. from Harvard’s Kennedy School.
The event will be archived online for later viewing on the Woodrow Wilson School’s web media site – http://wws.princeton.edu/webmedia.